University Vaccine Passports

We are horrified by the suggestion of introducing University Vaccine Passports. If you feel strongly about this issue, please write to your MP today!

To: your MP ( make sure you add your address at the bottom of your email)
To: ministers@education.gov.ukCopy: Nadhim Zahawi, Vaccines Minister – nadhim.zahawi.mp@parliament.uk

Copy: leader@labour.org.uk

Copy: altsale@parliament.uk Sir Graham Brady

Copy: if you have one, your faith leader.

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Dear [name of MP], Education Ministers

As a concerned parent, the Prime Minister’s suggestion that vaccine passports may be required for universities fills me with horror.

This is an unacceptable proposal which would take our society on a profoundly dark path.

It would create a two tier society where technologies of the state create new social hierarchies. It would embed and deepen existing social inequalities. It would turn what has until now been considered a fundamental human right into a privilege contingent on willingness to accept a medical intervention (and an intervention for which there is as yet no long term safety data).

This is a cynical move, designed to coerce young people to take a vaccine for a disease that happily doesn’t affect them directly. Yet coercion is anathema to key tenets of medical ethics, law and morality and should have no place in a civilised society. This is the antithesis of fairness and is yet another disproportionate penalisation of young people – young people who are not themselves at significant risk from this virus.

The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee found that there was no scientific justification whatsoever for vaccine passports and said “Covid-status certification system would, by its very nature, be discriminatory”; university leaders have rounded on the proposals, saying that they are a “terrible infringement on personal freedom”; and as recently as last week Nadhim Zahawi, Vaccines Minister, reassured MPs in the House of Commons that vaccine passports would not be introduced in educational settings – “that is our very strong commitment”, he stated.

This proposal paves the way to a two tier education system and through that to a two tier society. I cannot and will not accept this future for my children and I will never support a party that advocates for medical apartheid. I am sickened that any government would so much as flirt with this profoundly dark path.

University students are not children, but they are young people who now especially need our protection. This is a staggering betrayal of those young people, coming on top of a year of deprivation.

Please publicly and vocally reject this abhorrent proposal.